One warm evening, Double D had to lower the temperature of the
thermostat to keep from sweating after his bath. He and Jason were
lounging on the couch watching a documentary. Jason’s head was nestled
in his lap. Engrossed in the plight of the polar bears, Jason didn’t
notice Double D’s intense study of him.

Jason certainly wasn’t as painfully handsome as Kevin. He was more
slender and lean than Kevin. Jason’s face bordered gorgeous, the way
cologne models were gorgeous. Kevin was handsome, the way the devil was
probably handsome. Jason’s lazy smile promised tender kisses under an
apple tree. Kevin’s quick grin promised flashes of heat and groans in
the darkness. Double D had to wonder how he managed to get involved
with two extremes on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Then again, perhaps Kevin and Jason weren’t even on the same plateau.
Kevin was straight. It was in every gesture he made. He never really
paid attention Double D when they had sex, never touched his boyish
parts, even evaded looking at them. Kevin had just been experimenting.
It was a hobby to stave off the summer boredom. It made the painful
ache in his thin chest easier to tolerate. It had been his own fault
for falling in love with Kevin in the first place. Kevin hadn’t made
him promises. It was easier to know he’d never had Kevin’s love to
lose. It made it easier to move on.

“Hey.”

Double D blinked down at Jason with a sheepish smile. “Can I get you
anything?”

“Nope. You looked kinda confused.”

“Y-Yes, I . . . I wonder why the mother polar bear doesn’t simply eat
her young if she is starving.”

“Says the guy who thinks cacti have feelings.”

“They do!”

Jason sat up on the couch and stretched. “What were you really thinking
about?”

He blushed and looked down at his fidgeting fingers. “Unpleasant
things.”

“Like the jock across the street?”

“Kevin doesn’t play baseball anymore, so he can’t be classified as a
jock. And the word ‘jock’ is merely a--”

“You two dated, huh?”

He shook his head, repositioned his hat a little. “We used to have
sex.”

“So you used to have sex, but you didn’t date?”

“No. Just sex.”

He considered this briefly before shrugging his shoulders. “Not that
I’m complaining. His loss is my gain and all that.”

Double D watched him stand and scratched the small of his back. When
lounging around the house, Jason was usually in a white t-shirt, just
like Kevin. But Jason didn’t own any basketball shorts or flip flops.
They were just too different, and it helped Double D clear his mind of
the “jock” across the street.

Before he could stand and head up to bed, Jason came back, smiling.
“Thought I’d give you something else to think about.”

If this had been Kevin, he would have bent Double D over the back of his
parents’ living room sectional, facing the rest of the empty room, as
he was taken from behind. It would have been fast and almost violent in
its intensity. But Jason lad him onto his back on the couch so he
could see the way the light from the TV played against the soft lines of
Double D’s face like Northern Lights. Then Jason loomed above him, all
smiles and blond hair. He touched before he took, teased and
encouraged until Double D had orgasmed twice before Jason slid inside
him.

If this had been Kevin, there would have been teeth around the back of
his neck. Kevin would clamp down so hard, Double D would be afraid of
losing blood. Then he would let go, latch onto his ear lob, and growl
out, “Scream, dork. I want to hear you scream.”

Jason rubbed the insides of Double D’s spread legs, but he wasn’t
smiling anymore. “Like an angel.” He hooked his hands under his
lover’s knees and pulled them up so he could kiss both knee caps.
“Beautiful.”

Kevin would have grabbed his arms and pulled them back, forcing Double D
to arch his back and accommodate the awkward angle and depth of Kevin’s
cock. “It’s too much,” he would whimper. “You’re too deep . . .”

Jason loomed above him before lowering himself, forearms braced on the
couch arms above Double D’s head. He could kiss him easily now, lips
dipping against the other’s to taste before pulling back to catch his
breath.

“I love you, Eddward,” he panted.

In response, he shut his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the
member thrusting into him.

Jason came with a shocked, choked sound. Only then did Double D realize
what had happened. That noise reminded him that this was Jason, not
Kevin. If this had been Kevin, he would have made a noise that was part
growl, part shout. It wasn’t Kevin inside him. Kevin wasn’t here.

Slowly, Jason pulled out and off of him, hands still braced on the back
of the couch. He looked down at him as though he was seeing him for the
first time. It was a sort of confused, disappointed look, one that
Double D recognized from Kevin’s face. Sometimes, after Kevin had cum
and emptied himself into Double D’s accepting anus, he would frown that
way, as though wondering “What the hell just happened?” That expression
of “What the hell have I done?” was one of the few things Kevin and
Jason shared.

“Yeah. It would have been better if you had meant to.” He leaned back
and got off the couch entirely.

“I don’t what I was thinking.”

“Pretty obvious what you were thinking.”

“But . . . you’re the one who brought him up.”

Jason affixed him with a hard, penetrating glare that Double D had never
seen on him before. He was angry. Up until now, Double D had thought
him incapable of such steaming fury. “Don’t fucking blame this one me!”

He flinched. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“How long have you been thinking about him while you were with me?”

“Never before this!”

“Then you admit you were thinking about him just now.”

It seemed stupid to deny it. “Yes.”

“Dammit!” he roared and stalked the room like a caged predator, still
naked. “Damn you both to hell!”

“That’s not fair. This isn’t Kevin’s fault!”

“Don’t say his name to me!”

Flinching again, Double D lowered his head, not sure what else he could
say. He’d never been yelled at before; neither his parents nor Eddy had
ever had a passionate enough opinion about him to find anything to yell
about. What could this anger mean? Was it embarrassment? Maybe it
was the feeling of having ones territory trespassed upon? It could have
been betrayal. What could have made him so restless?

“Are you still in love with him?”

“Yes.”

It just popped out, no thought or intent, just the harrowing truth
Double D had known all along but was too distraught to admit. No one
wanted to be the only one in love. It meant the other side of your
bridge was incomplete, so when you try to get to the other side, you had
nowhere to go but into the stormy waters below or back the way you
came. Either way, you had to ignore the gleaming structure you’d spent
so much time building and accept that whoever you’d built the bridge for
had never loved you back enough to build their own.

“That . . . that doesn’t mean I don’t still care about you,” he tried,
anything to stop Jason from gaping at him, with all of that hurt naked
on his face.

He threw his hands into the air. “And you dragged me out here like we
were gonna make off together and be so damned happy! Bull shit! You
lied to me! You’ve been lying to me!”

“I didn’t lie!” He finally got off the couch and wrapped the blanket
around himself. Jason may have been able to have this conversation
naked, but Double D couldn’t. “I do care for you--”

“But you don’t love me,” he snarled.

“N-No . . . but that doesn’t mean that with time, I--”

“You’ve had time! We’ve been together for months!”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t expect me to develop lasting love based
on the amount of time--”

“But you can love the jock just fine!”

And that was certainly enough. No one could talk to him about the
painful, unwanted feelings that still had a vice grip on his heart.
“I’ve loved Kevin for years! Since I was a teenager! Don’t tell me
about love and time!”

Jason stopped pacing to glare darkly at him. His fists were clenched at
his sides, and when he took three menacing steps towards him, Double D
wondered if it was common for one boyfriend to hit another. It wouldn’t
have been the first time it happened.

“Waste of fucking time,” he growled. “I’m out of here.”

When Jason brushed past, Double D let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d
been holding. If this had been Kevin, he would have been punched.